Newt Gingrich tells Newsmax that President Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage in an effort to placate powerful gay activists who tired of his “equivocating” on the issue.

Asked about Newsweek’s recent reference to Obama as the first gay president, the former House speaker and GOP presidential candidate smiled and said: “Contrary to Newsweek’s clever cover I think from everything we know he’s heterosexual, so I don’t think he’s gay.”

Then he got serious: “Look, he adopted the policy of his most powerful constituents. The fact is the gay caucus, the gay millionaires, gay activists are at the heart of the Obama system, and they had finally gotten tired of his equivocating. So he said what they wanted him to.
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“This is a guy who ran for the state senate in favor of gay marriage, ran for the U.S. Senate against gay marriage, ran in ’08 sort of being equivocal, and this year finally said he’s for it. I think it does take the flip-flop attack away. I don’t quite see how Obama with a straight face now can say that Romney’s changed his positions since it’s quite clear that in fact on a pretty major issue Obama’s changed his position.”

Asked if he is concerned that the growing support for same-sex marriage could translate into legal requirements for religious Christians and others to accept this, Gingrich responded: “Yes. I am very concerned that we are subordinating religious liberty to the intense lobbying of one group.

“When we look for example in Massachusetts where the Catholic Church no longer offers adoption services, when you look at some of the efforts in Europe to say that reading the Bible is a hate crime because of the phrases that are in the Bible I think there’s a real danger of militant activists trying to in effect eliminate religious liberty.”